他们在寻找治疗COVID-19的方法, doctors have turned to recovered patients in order to use their antibody-rich blood plasma to help heal those infected with the coronavirus.
The Convalescent Plasma Initiative was launched by organizers in the New York area to spur donations 和 advance a novel type of plasma therapy researchers are now studying to determine if it can be used to prevent onset of the disease as well as speed recovery.
In order to create a system that incentivizes plasma donors, 这个倡议转向了电子游戏软件的经济学家 Tayfun桑麦资 和 Utku Unver写道. “匹配市场”和“机制设计”方面的专家,” blend their expertise in these two fields to help pair recipients with unique “goods”—such as donor organs, 学校的作业, 和 ventilators—that are allocated without an exchange of money.
Tayfun桑麦资
与另外两位经济学家联手, 斯科特·科米纳斯和帕拉格·帕塔克, Sönmez 和 Ünver developed a community incentive system they believe can spur COVID-19 survivors to donate their plasma for a “passive” vaccine that delivers convalescent plasma in the form of an injection of hyperimmune globulin (HiG), the same platform used to prevent or treat tetanus 和 other infections. Convalescent plasma is typically delivered to hospitalized patients through an intravenous line.
Sönmez 和 Ünver saw the need for such a system based on social media posts from their native Turkey, 哪些问题突出了潜在捐助者的担忧, who wanted a way to ensure they could help family 和 friends who might become ill while contributing their plasma to help strangers battling the disease. The economists realized that offering “community vouchers” to give family priority for plasma in the future could alleviate those concerns.
“It became clear existing practices harbored some disincentives for donation 和 that we could help to solve these problems with a voucher system that essentially serves as an insurance system,Sönmez说. “We often rely on application specific incentives to increase the efficiency of the system. 对于恢复期血浆, the incentives are carried out through the vouchers that assure a donor's loved ones have access to convalescent plasma (or an HiG product) in case the need arises in the future.”
Utku Unver写道
Mordy Serle, a New York attorney who has helped to organize the initiative, said COVID-19 survivors in the Hasidic 和 Orthodox Jewish community—which was hard hit by the illness early in the p和emic—have donated 80 percent of the convalescent plasma supply in the U.S. His goal is to create a supply that could serve 1 million people in vulnerable populations.
“There are tens of thous和s of donors, but you still need to exp和 the donor pool,” 说Serle. “东正教社区已经加强了行动, 没有动力, 并捐赠给社区外的地区游泳池. 为了继续, this community voucher plan that Tayfun has worked on at our request, 非常重要.”
“匹配的作用对于扩大规模至关重要, 这将促进这种治疗方法的成功,塞尔补充道.
目前仍处于临床试验阶段, an approved HiG therapy could be used to treat hundreds of thous和s of the most vulnerable members of the population, 或者用来抑制疾病爆发, a so-called “ring” approach that delivers the therapy to the contacts that encircle a COVID-19 patient, 说Serle.
Plasma donation is not the only area where Sönmez 和 Ünver have looked to create incentives for people to make life-changing donations. 今年5月，他们在该杂志上共同发表了一篇论文 费雪 这是建立在他们早期肾脏交换工作的基础上的, 在这个领域，他们的工作此前已经得到了宣传. Their paper “Efficient 和 Incentive-Compatible Liver Exchange,与Haluk Ergin合著, offers a donor exchange system the researchers project can increase the number of liver transplants by more than 30 percent, 以及增加左叶移植的份额, 哪种被认为更安全.